I hoped I wasn’t being rude by using my iPod to drown out the silence of strangers. We were all thrown in a van together by virtue of signing up for a snowshoeing trip, and I knew I wasn’t alone in my wishes. The woman in front of me opened up a magazine a few minutes into the drive, although she obviously knew some of the other passengers. I overheard a few of them talking about previous excursions they’d taken with the city Parks and Rec Department. As the least experienced and (almost) youngest person there, I was most comfortable sitting toward the back and listening to a “This American Life” podcast.

Actually, nobody seemed very interested in talking at that early hour on a Saturday. The only muffled conversation I heard during the ride from Portland to Mt. Hood came from the front seats, where the tour guide—also our driver—chatted with the woman who’d landed in the passenger seat as the first person picked up that morning. Better her than me. I dislike small talk anyway, and I was more concerned with having an adventure than with making new friends. Before this I had never engaged in wintry recreation, aside from trudging through my snow-covered neighborhood streets to get to Fred Meyer during the 2008 “blizzard.” This year, for a change, I’d decided not to hibernate through the coldest season. (more…)

My affair with the car-free lifestyle came to an abrupt end last month. I cared passionately for it, but my patience thinned over the years as I dated people, made new friends, and got busy with volunteer work—all of which were inhibited by my lack of vehicular mobility. Even running simple errands required planning and scheduling a thick cushion of time for transportation. However, because I’m a tolerant person who doesn’t mind living at a slower pace, I had tentatively planned to stay car-free until I had children (a possibility that’s still a long way from happening).

In the meantime, I started relying on Zipcar more and more to support my three “kids”: two cats that need to be taken to the vet, and a seven-year-old mentee who needs to be picked and dropped off several times a month. I discovered that a personal schedule becomes harder to maintain when you have kids. Zipcars seem less handy when you can barely manage to return them on time. Buses are extremely unattractive when you have two cat carriers, or when you’d have to take a 30-minute ride to your mentee’s house for the purpose of getting her away from her neighborhood for a while.

Still, I’d never thought seriously about getting a car until early November. When the thoughts started, they quickly ran their course and told me definitively, confidently, that it was time to start car-shopping. (more…)

Among Humboldt County aficionados, I’m not the only person who is fascinated by the Ferndale Cemetery for aesthetic reasons. It’s historically significant, but more importantly to me, it’s a beautiful expanse of land. Whenever I visited the tiny town of Ferndale, I would notice the wrought-iron cemetery gates and tell myself that I ought to go there and take photos someday. First I had to get over the fear that I would look like a creep, prowling through a garden of headstones with my camera. I generally like walking around cemeteries, whether or not I’m there to take photos, but I’m always mindful of other people who are visiting the gravesites of loved ones. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m there just for kicks. (more…)

I try not to swim in the mainstream of culture: frankly, it is trashy and overcrowded. I vehemently dislike the crass, blaring hype surrounding movies, television, popular music and anything else that is insisted upon as a Must-See or Must-Have, and if you haven’t seen it or don’t have it, you’re some kind of kook. That’s me trying to put my thoughts about this topic into a nutshell, because it’s not the subject of today’s post. Someday, I will rant more; today, I just want to introduce some context for the fact that I rarely go to the movies. When I do, it’s usually at one of Portland’s small, three-dollar pub theaters to see a second-run or independent film, rather than a cineplex. Cineplexes are like the big-box stores of movie theaters, except that, unlike Wal-Mart, they are more expensive than the competition. And, as I found out a few days ago, they are unpleasant enough to make a young person crotchety. (more…)